The COSMO-SkyMed system is a constellation of four radar satellites for Earth observation for dual (civil and military) use. Its purpose is to monitor the globe for the sake of emergency prevention (management of environmental risks), strategy (defence and national security), and scientific and commercial purposes, providing data on a global scale.

The COSMO-SkyMed main capacity:

4 satellite SAR constellation

Right & left looking acquisition (Satellites #3 and # 4 are only Right)

SAR-2000 - Synthetic Aperture Radar

The SAR-2000 instrument was designed and developed by TAS-I (Thales Alenia Space Italia). SAR-2000 is a multi-mode instrument, operating at X-band, able to provide different performance characteristics in terms of swath size, spatial resolution, and polarization configurations.

The COSMO-SkyMed SAR-2000 instrument can be operated in different beam which include: